Of the few authors who have escaped the iconoclastic onslaughts of modem criticism, Nathaniel Hawthorne stands unassailed and with undiminished prestige among America's immortals. Generations of readers have been moved by the austere and relentless power of The Scarlet Letter. For its revelation of a guilt-stricken attitude toward sin, for Its intense human interest and its purity of diction and accuracy of analysis, for its interpretation of the Puritan way of life, the story of Hester Prynne has inevitably become part of our national legacy.